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    Chalkface

    February 2nd, 2010

    Chalkface is a new space on the Pontydysgu website.  It is an area where we are planning to collect together all those posts that deal with stuff to do with classroom practice.

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    Posts on Chalkface

    February 6th, 2012 by Graham Attwell

    From a Jisc press release:

    Over 14,000 items of archived TV footage from 17 European countries are now available via the EUscreen online portal for teaching, research and general interest.

    EUscreen – the result of a collaboration between 36 partners across Europe – provides a rich insight into Europe’s television heritage with content dating from the 1920s to the present day.

    The portal includes rare footage and commentary on key events in history, including a 1962 interview with Martin Luther King about racial discrimination in the US.

    John Ellis, Professor of Media Arts at Royal Holloway and principal investigator on the EUscreen project, said: “This is a valuable resource for anyone interested in social history or indeed TV history, as it brings together tens of thousands of clips from across Europe. The portal is available to anyone (not only academics) and it is very easy to get absorbed and spend hours browsing all of the footage.”

    The expansive footage has also proved popular as a learning aid for foreign language students, with clips available in 14 languages.

    By the end of September 2012, there will be around 30,000 items of digital content freely available on the portal as the European providers continue to add carefully selected material.

    Explore the EUscreen footage

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    Play, emergent curricula, serendipity and opportunity

    January 21st, 2012 by Graham Attwell
    Learning and Teaching in Networked Publics
    View more presentations from Helen Keegan

    In a blog post about the BETT show in London I complained that there was little evidence about using technology for teaching and learning. And that is why I like this presentation by Helen Keegan. Whilst she looks at a whole series of web and social networking tools the whole focus is on real life use. I particularly like her advice on slide 32 – “Leave space in the course to allow space for play, emergent curricula, serendipity and opportunity.”

    Posted in chalkface, e-learning 2.0, education 2.0, Knowledge development, learning 2.0, Multimedia, Presentations, Social networking, Social Software, teaching and learning | No Comments »

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    Using Cartoons for Engagement

    November 29th, 2011 by Graham Attwell

    GoAnimate.com: Episode One – Jenny Jobseeker by elleemployability

    I’ve been working on a series of webquests on the use of the internet far careers guidance and counselling. And I stumbled on this great blog by Elle Dyson. Elle is making a a mini cartoon series following the journey of ‘Jenny Jobseeker’ as she battles through the unemployment jungle. As she says there are limitations to the free version of Go animate (the online tool she used to make the cartoon) but, she says, “it serves as (I think) a rather nifty tool for engagement – providing a little bit of advice, giving them a bit of a laugh, and most importantly engaging them in the service, encouraging them to access support from us, and in accessing local opportunities.”

    Posted in Career Guidance, careers, chalkface, G8WAY, Multimedia | No Comments »

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    Interested in games?

    November 14th, 2011 by Graham Attwell

    From Futurelab:

    Aimed at teachers and those interested in using games with an educational intent, this handbook aims to provide some useful anchoring points for educators to make sense of the area and to develop practical approaches for the use of computer games as a medium for learning.

    It is assumed by some that the models games employ lead to learning, as young people effectively learn how to play without necessarily being explicitly taught, doing vast amounts of reading or interacting with others; while others see games as boring, tedious, time-consuming, and repetitive.

    Both of these viewpoints can be true: as stated the impact of a game is dependent on the game itself, but also the player, circumstance of use, mediation of the teacher and other players. In fact, many academic researchers of young people’s uses of digital media argue, counter to the hype, that computer games have been insufficiently well researched as a medium for learning.

    In this handbook we aim to summarise not only the key theories around why they are considered to have potential, but how they have been used in the past, how they are used for learning in a family context, which attributes lead to learning, and considerations for using them with young people.

    Download the book

    Posted in chalkface, games, Pedagogy | No Comments »

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    Raindrops on roses

    November 4th, 2011 by Angela Rees

    November is Sharing Good Practice Month at the college where I lecture so I thought I’d jump on the Chalkface blog and share two of my favourite things.

    I love historypin. It’s a Google Maps mashup where you can upload pictures from the past and compare them to the current street view. You can add video and audio too. There’s heaps of potential for school projects and it’s a great tool for digital storytelling. Have a look at the Beatlemania tour for inspiration!

    Continuing with the maps theme, every maths teacher needs to know about the Maths Maps project.  Again using Google Maps this collaborative resource links maths questions to physical places.  For example, a pin in Real Madrid Football Stadium invites you to zoom in and calculate the area of the pitch. Further more, one map can cover many topics and colour coded pins allow for age or level differentiation. There’s more information on how to join in with the project on the edte.ch blog.

    Posted in Angela Blog, chalkface, teaching and learning | 1 Comment »

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    this would be funny if it wasn’t true…

    October 6th, 2011 by Jenny Hughes

    (Go see the free embed deal at http://www.andertoons.com/free-cartoons/ )

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    A mile of ideas….let’s go for it!

    October 6th, 2011 by Jenny Hughes

    Inspired by Tom Barrett’s presentations based on one idea per slide, I just asked Graham how big a slide was. After a pitying look and a very sniffy technical response, he helpfully put up a powerpoint on his screen and we measured how wide it was with a wooden ruler. It was about 30cm. Then I went for full screen mode and stretched it to .67 metres, which is therefore the length of an idea.

    Divide that into a kilometre and it comes to about 1500 (give or take a few slides that sneakily have two ideas and take away the title slides and allowing a factor for lap top size screens).  Then I counted the number of ideas already published on Chalkface, including Tom’s, and found 108. That’s 72 metres of idea already – not bad, and loads to come!

    Now I want an electronic thermometer thingy – like they used to have to measure the donations towards replacing the lead on the church roof – to see whether we can get a kilometre of ideas in the next year.

    I admit there are some conceptual problems here because everyone knows that ideas are traditionally are measured by weight (as in ‘I’ve got tons of ideas’) or volume (as in ‘Here’s a handful of ideas’ ).

    Anyway – that’s the target. A kilometre of ideas for teachers.

    Bored of Pontydysgu :  (

    PS Graham has pointed out that tweeted ideas are smaller so if some maths teacher could work out how long 140 characters are….

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    Tribute to Steve Jobs….32 ways to use an iPod Touch in the classroom

    October 6th, 2011 by Jenny Hughes

    Last year I posted 20 Things To Do With Mobile Phones (or something!) – here’s the next generation of ideas, started by Tom Barrett. Seems a fitting tribute to Steve Jobs

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    31 Interesting ways of using audio in the classroom

    October 6th, 2011 by Jenny Hughes

    As promised – the first of the ‘mile of ideas’ topics

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    Interesting ways to …..

    October 6th, 2011 by Jenny Hughes

    Great idea from Tom Barrett who started off the series of ‘How to…’ presentations. One idea per slide, add yours on the end and keep it rolling! And loads of thanks to all those who have already contributed.

    If you want to join the party, look at the last slide of any one for information on how to do this. Meanwhile, twitter their existence and alert all those over-worked, short-on-ideas teachers you know. We are going to post the whole series here.

    Tom has an excellent website This is a must-read for all classroom teachers. Please note – those of you who have accessed his site before – the url has changed. (For which he blames the bullying of Doug Belshaw!!) Whatever the address, you NEED this site!

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